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Dr. Geeta Shroff: Saviour or fraud!?

The New Delhi Magic Cures for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Alzheimer's Disease, Down Syndrome, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Parkinson's Disease, Spinal Cord Injury and Stroke

By Prof. Talaat I. Farag

Stem-cell research has been an arena for much political debate and controversy over the last few years. During the Bush years, the United States congress withheld millions of dollars from research centres nationwide whose work was focused on this innovative technological technique. Most of the criticism again stem-cell research and therapy came from religious groups that saw the use any manipulation of stem cells as an act of homicide and violence against a fetus. This has derailed any progress in the development of the technology to treat all illnesses that can rely on the use of stem cells. Nevertheless, the ethical questions still haunt this promising new area for treatment.

Since limited funds have gone towards stem-cell research, the results of treatment remain unsubstantiated in cases where it was administered. However, this has not deterred some health care providers who have proceeded with treatment unabated, despite criticism from both the scientific and religious communities. One practitioner currently garnering the attention of the world for doing such a thing is Indian Dr. Geeta Shroff from New Delhi. The untested, unproven, unmonitored, and highly controversial therapy is used by Dr. Shroff in her NuTech Mediworld. Many persons with chronic diseases visited her centre, often paying tens of thousands of dollars in hope that stem cell therapy will cure their conditions. The 28-years-old Ashley Thomson from New Zealand traveled a long way to see Dr. Shroff. He said that after nearly a decade in a wheelchair, he got up on his feet last autumn, after just two weeks of treatment at Dr. Geeta's New Delhi clinic, where he received injections of what his doctor says is a solution of human embryonic stem cells, which was also used to "irrigate" the spinal cord he broke in an accident almost 10 years ago. He added that he could move his toes, which had been immobilized, and he had felt sensations in his leg.

Another story is that of 33-year-old Shannon Centman, an American Navy officer who became paraplegic when she had an accident after falling asleep at the wheel. Now I can stand up with the help of calipers and I can use the rest-room like a normal human being!The turnaround took place, Shannon says, after just six weeks at Dr Geeta Shroff's Delhi clinic, Nutech Mediworld, where regular injections of human embryonic stem cells were administered to her.

Australian motivational speaker Perry Cross, a quadriplegic who'd been paralyzed by a rugby accident at the age of 19, said he could breathe without his ventilator after two months of treatment from Dr Shroff. "I feel that by coming here, my lottery numbers have finally come up," he told the world media.

A 60-year-old Canadian bookkeeper from British Columbia, Inga MacVicar, has been to NuTech Mediworld center three times, seeking treatment for spinal injuries, including damage sustained in a twenty-foot fall from a barn roof. She had back spasms so severe, that they left her unable to breath. Today, she swims 20 laps a day, which she credits to the $60,000 therapy she received from Dr. Geeta in India, which has kept her out of a wheel-chair. Dozens of Canadians who have flocked to Indian stem cell centres seek therapies prohibited in their own country

Dr. Geeta says that she has used stem cells successfully to treat everything from Alzheimer's to Autism, Down Syndrome and Parkinson's Disease. She began her research in a lab in her garage in the later 1990's, and spent two years in developing her process of establishing an infinite cell line. She said that they had been fully tested for safety, before injecting them into people. Her first Indian patient was suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, with just months to live according to doctors.

Dr. Shroff is a former infertility specialist who has cultured an endless line of stem cells from a single embryo donated by a fertility patient a decade ago. She insists that she is the first person in the world to do this, and that her treatments are effective because they use pure embryonic, not adult stem cells. She claims to have treated 700 patients, all having shown improvements with no side effects. Her so-called success stories and their popularization as well as the prevalence of chronic condition for which stem cell therapy might be promising have all contributed to her growing reputation. Some seek her out in the same manner as that of a savior! "Stem-cell tourism," as is the case of Dr. Shroff's clinic, is a booming industry worldwide, with growing markets in the following places: China, Latin America, Thailand, Japan, Germany and Eastern Europe. On the contrary, in Canada, embryonic stem-cell researched is governed both by law on assisted reproductive technology and by federal research guidelines. In 2007, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) adopted guidelines that state that, "there is no approved indication for stem cell therapy as part of routine medical practice other than bone marrow transplantation." However the absence of any prohibitive laws on stem-cell research and the limits to enforcement in India has meant that Dr. Shroff can operate without fear of legal repercussions. This is one of the reasons India has a booming medical tourism industry. Another Indian scientist named, Dr. Satish Totey, the Secretary of the Stem Cell Research Forum of India, founded a Bangalore-based firm called Stemceutics, which is testing the use of adult stem cells to treat lung injuries, liver injuries and heart attacks.

Critics Ask for Evidence

There isn't a vast field of data supporting the idea that stem cell therapy might be dangerous. An example of the possible negative effects is the case of an Israeli child who developed benign brain and spinal cord tumors after receiving transplants of human fetal stem cells in a Russian clinic. Furthermore, many physicians and scientists have expressed their reservations about the administration of the therapy without prior testing. Prof. Timothy Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, said that there is one thing that Dr. Geeta could do to end this controversy regarding her treatment--If people are getting better, people are experiencing improvements--let's see the data." Peculiar enough, Dr. Geeta refuses to share her data, has not submitted to peer review, and has not performed any controlled clinical trials. "Dr. Geeta has not published data on it, that is not very ethical. Share your discovery with the world and peers can critique and improve your technique," insisted Prof. Caulfield. This led other researchers to label her as a fraud! As part of a rapidly expanding industry in stem cell treatments worldwide with an average cost of $21,500 for treatment per patient, some healthcare providers are asking for evidence of success before justifying the exorbitant sums of money patients are spending. Prof. Caulfield suspects that some combination of placebo-effect, cognitive dissonance based on the very high price tag, and immuno-response to the foreign fluid she injects gives patients the sense that their bodies are responding to treatment.

Having treated over 700 patients with her stem-cell therapy technique, Dr. Shroff's sample is sizable enough and can benefit science and innovation in the technique. She can do the world a favor by being more transparent and publish the compiled data of her patients. While in medicine and health care there is much competition in both research and practice, it would not be convincing to argue that those who criticize Dr. Shroff do so because of jealousy over her comparative success or the amount of money she has amassed. For this reason it is imperative for Indian medical authorities to regulate the treatment to ensure that it is work while and the results substantiated. This may be the only way to decide whether Dr. Geeta Shroff is a Saviour, and not a Fraud!